This is after I built ruby from source to try and resolve this,
following[1]. It has made little difference, in fact if anything things
seem to be even slower since I switched my path to use /usr/local/bin
rather than the one installed with Leopard.

They’re mostly getting sub-second performance, while on my machine it
takes over 3 seconds, just to load ActiveSupport.

ActiveSupport is pretty big and goes about things in a very round
about way. So it is a slow to load regardless. However, 3 seconds does
seem overly slow.

Some comparison could help evaluate the problem. Try installing facets
(gem install facets) and time how long it take to require ‘facets’.
That’s another big library, but simpler in design. If that take more
than a second than something is seriously wrong.

ActiveSupport is pretty big and goes about things in a very round
about way. So it is a slow to load regardless. However, 3 seconds does
seem overly slow.

So, an update: I discovered this thread[1] and this one[2] and tried
rebuilding ruby with -O3 and --disable-pthreads, and things have got a
bit better.

My benchmark test now takes about 1.2 seconds.

However the benchmark from [2] takes about 44 seconds, which is
appalling in comparison to the scores from similar machines on that
thread.

I have very little idea what I’m going when building things from source,
but I feel as if I’m on to something here. Any pointers appreciated very
much.

Some comparison could help evaluate the problem. Try installing facets
(gem install facets) and time how long it take to require ‘facets’.
That’s another big library, but simpler in design. If that take more
than a second than something is seriously wrong.